3 The Political Weaponization of Gun Owners: The NRA and Gun Ownership as Social Identity

Firepower ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 44-84
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gun Ownership

The Political Weaponization of Gun Owners

2021 ◽  
pp. 44-84
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gun Ownership ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
Newspaper Editors ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Over Time

This chapter analyzes the editorials (1930–2008) from the National Rifle Association's (NRA) American Rifleman magazine, along with gun-related letters to the editor of four major newspapers covering that same period, to document how the NRA created a distinct social identity built around gun ownership, charting the NRA's assiduous, long-term efforts — through not just its membership communications but also its popular firearms programs — to cultivate such an identity and to connect it to politics. The chapter uses the American Rifleman as a measure of the organization's views and priorities and treat pro-gun letters to newspaper editors as a measure of the attitudes and views of NRA supporters. It also utilizes the letters from gun owners to measure their feelings about guns over time. The chapter demonstrates how the NRA has used this identity to mobilize its supporters into politics by portraying gun owners' ways of life as under threat from gun control proposals and imploring its members to take action in defense of it.

scholarly journals Local Candidates, Place-Based Identities, and Electoral Success

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Schulte-Cloos ◽  
Paul C. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Unique Feature ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Matching Strategy

AbstractWhile a large body of literature empirically documents an electoral advantage for local candidates, the exact mechanisms accounting for this effect remain less clear. We integrate theories on the political geography of candidate-voter relations with socio-psychological accounts of citizens’ local attachment, arguing that citizens vote for candidates from their own local communities as an expression of their place-based identity. To test our argument, we exploit a unique feature of the German mixed-member electoral system. We identify the causal effect of candidates’ localness by relying on within-electoral-district variation coupled with a geo-matching strategy on the level of municipalities ($$\hbox {N}=11175$$ N = 11175 ). The results show that voters exhibit a strong bias in favor of local candidates even when they are not competitive. More than only expecting particularistic benefits from representatives, citizens appear to vote for candidates from their own local community to express their place-based social identity.

scholarly journals HVOR BOR DE VILDE? Erindringer om identitet og politik i Amazonas

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Hvalkof
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peruvian Amazon ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Study Tour ◽  
Conventional Study ◽  
Political Success

Søren Hvalkof: Where are the Savages? Memories of Identity and Politics in the Amazon The author’s personal experience with a conventional study tour to the Peruvian Andes that metamorphosed into an ethnographic joumey of the Amazon, highlights the central importance of the ethnographic field work as anthropology’s phenomenological soul. The case of the Asheninka of the Peruvian Amazon is used to show why the ethnographic description is crucial to the realization of the political potentials inherent in non-Westem societies. Using classificatory models of ethnic and social identity developed by Dr. Niels Fock and rethinking them in the context of power, the epistemological contrast between the developmentalist and essentialist monolith of Western thinking and the indigenous, nonessentialist, multicentric and particularistic universe is demonstrated. The recent political success of the latter is related to the potentials released through the growing process of globalization. An anecdote from the field epitomizes the choices made by the Asheninka.

scholarly journals Factors Behind the Popularity of Protest Messages on Twitter: The Case of Venezuela Crisis

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-29
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Petrov ◽  
Denis Stukal ◽  
Andrey Ahremenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Support ◽  
Efficacy Belief ◽  
The Social ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Project Participants

Based on the material of the political crisis in Venezuela in 2019, the paper studies factors behind the popularity of protest messages (tweets) on Twitter. Methodologically, the study develops the notion of SIMCA (Social Identity Model for Collective Action). The theory suggests that factors in the social environment may mobilize a person through such psychological antecedents as anger, belief in ability to achieve the desired goals (efficacy belief) and protest identification. The project participants created a database including over 5.7 million tweets, based on which three sets of the most popular messages (tweets) have been selected. The three sets were named according to psychological antecedents: a) anger, b) belief in success (including international support), and c) protest identification. The analysis of the tweets demonstrates that the belief in the success of the protest campaign has the greatest mobilizing force.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kristin J. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
American Dream ◽  
The Political ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White Voters

The introduction lays out the thesis of Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged. In order to understand the political and social backlash against efforts toward equality of the last few decades, culminating in the election of Donald Trump for US president, we must understand entitlement. The introduction begins with the inexplicable election of Donald Trump in 2016. White voters, both women and men, put Donald Trump in the Whitehouse. His campaign of entitled resentment resonated with these voters. This book is not about Donald Trump, however. Rather, it is about those who have been traditionally advantaged due to their social identity of maleness and whiteness and yet believe they are being shut out of the American dream. They are the victims of supposed progress. The introduction ends with an outline of each chapter.

Postcolonial On/scenity: The Sexualization of Political Space in Post-Independence Ukraine

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 178-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryna Romanets
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Sexually Explicit ◽  
Societal Structure ◽  
Cultural Forms

AbstractThe article focuses on the image-driven constructions of the political that bring sexual scenarios into the Ukrainian public sphere. The upsurge and incorporation of sexually explicit iconography into diverse popular cultural forms signify a strategic move against the sedimented holdovers from the Soviet totalitarian regime and are concomitant with the rise of a new social identity shaped in accordance with a changing societal structure.

The Political Significance of Social Identity

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Graham ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
The Political
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